the essential
The care center for caregivers with burnout (PEPS) has existed for a year at the Toulouse University Hospital. More than 200 people have already been welcomed there. We met one of them, a psychologist in an EHPAD.
Barbara (1) is doing better. She considers herself “lucky” to have been welcomed into the Center for the Prevention of Burnout in Caregivers (PEPS). “I didn’t even know it existed. Today, after five months of care, I see all the benefits.”
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A psychologist in an EHPAD (residential facility for dependent elderly people) for over ten years, Barbara had to stop working last fall. The tests showed nothing but her body couldn’t take it anymore. The occupational physician understood immediately and referred her to the PEPS system. “I didn’t realize what was happening to me, it took me a while to realize that I was exhausted. When you’re a caregiver, you think of others, not yourself,” summarizes the fifty-year-old.
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“I no longer recognized myself in my profession”
It was a first workshop, entitled “Developing your resources to deal with burnout”, that allowed her to understand. “We were given elements to recognize the signs. I quickly saw that I fit the typical profile: perfectionist, sense of duty, very high professional conscience, lack of confidence, difficulty setting limits. And all the women in the workshop were in this case. I felt less alone”, says Barbara.
The psychologist describes “increasingly tense working conditions” in the EHPAD where she works, “with a lot of turnover in the care teams and instability that creates tension and exhaustion. All of this has an impact on the residents”. Her tasks are changing. “I was always given more missions, with more and more administrative work. With the fatigue, I had the impression of not doing enough, that it was me who couldn’t do it. I no longer recognized myself in the job, it was less and less human; I saw the families suffering and worried to see that things weren’t going well, I could only understand them, I was torn, I wanted everything to go well.”
“A chance to be able to say stop”
After more than seven months of sick leave, Barbara is at the end of her journey within the PEPS system where she also worked on self-affirmation in a second workshop and benefited from support from a work psychologist to discuss the continuation of his professional life. “For a while, I no longer wanted to be a psychologist even though I didn’t choose this profession by chance. I don’t yet know what direction I’m going to give to my professional life, I still feel fragile, in the process of consolidation, but I’m better and I see this episode as an opportunity… That of being able to say stop in order to move forward.”
